Revamp your Event Management Strategies with these 5 Tips

Introduction

Events are something event productions everyone can look forward to and can be a highlight in a community or group. It can be an exciting reason for community members, especially those from different places, to get together yearly or
monthly. Keep evolving and making your events better than the last one to keep your members excited. You can bring back speakers, sponsors and sessions that your attendees loved. But don’t just entrust the success of your events to merchandise and speakers, you need to utilize behind the scenes management tools to greatly aid you in your next events. Read on to see how you can take your event management to the next level.

Select the right Event Software for you

Choosing the perfect event software for you to use can be hard, but is important if you want to streamline your event management process. Selecting the right software helps you secure and consolidate all the
information about your event for both your team and attendees. By ensuring that everyone in the team is up to date with the flow of each stages in the plan, there will be less questions and confusion in both attendees and your team. The software features that you need to consider depends on the type of event you are hosting and community.

On the side of the management:

1) Integration – A membership event will provide you with a vault of valuable data from your attendees. You need software that can instantly create reports out of that data or export it to a third party you can trust to translate those data.

2) Hosting – Get software that has cloud solution to ensure that all details of your event and list of attendees are kept safe. Not only does cloud have more storage, it has lower cost and good security.

On the side of attendees:

1) Social media integration – Get your attendees to share the news about your event in their social media networks through RSVP pages and social media integration.

2) Online store sales – Offer to sell branded merchandise to your attendees either through your online store or provide a shop at your event. Most of your attendees want to boast that they are members of your community so what better way to do it through event exclusive merchandise.

3) Registration – Make registration to your event simple and easy as to not deter attendees. Use software that has custom registration forms that incorporate your brand and is optimized for mobile.

Incorporate benefits for membership

Choose software that has features for membership management and event planning. The easier it is to redeem the valuable benefits of membership at your event, the more enticing it is for non-members to register for your
membership and for members to attend.

Commonly these benefits are offered where members and non-members can
both attend the event.

Support online community spaces

One way of increasing attendance to your event is by supporting and promoting the events of others in you online community space. These online spaces can help other members connect with the community even if they’re from a different part of the globe. Show support to your online community and expect that those members will most likely show up to your events. Members can feel a sense of belonging from online communities through:

1) Public directories – Members are often urged to join groups when
they see other members are a part of it
2) Inclusivity – Members feel a part of something when they get
accepted or invited to a special group
3) Events – Provide local smaller groups of your community to conduct
their own small meetups to support the conversations that they have
online
4) Messaging – A good place for members to meet new friends and
connect with other community members
5) Promotions – Place CTAs at the homepage of your community page
to help promote your events
6) Committees – Your board, event committee and volunteers can
coordinate their ideas in online groups

These all help make members feel they belong. The more engaged they are
as a part of your community, the more they will be enticed to invest in your
future endeavors.

Tailor and Segment communications

Make your marketing personalized and get the word out there. Members won’t be able to show up to your events if they don’t know there’s one happening.When customizing your marketing and invitations, think about the different members like the one that have attended events and the ones that have not.

1) Before – When inviting members that have attended events before,
send invitations that are different compared to invitations to new
attendees. Offer incentives to returning members like discounts and
first time incentives to new members.
2) During – Update members that have registered about parking policies
and meal discounts. For those that aren’t able to register, send photos
or posts of how wonderful the event is to encourage them to register
for the next one.
3) After – Offer access to the link to photos during the event and other
valuable materials to your members along with thanking them for
attending. Stress once again to non-joiners about what they have
missed and encourage them to register for the next one.

Effectively plan using analytics

Data that you collect is what will help you improve your events. Use surveys to gather important information like:

1) Favorite activities / speaker / session in the event
2) What part of the event should be included again
3) Was the location ideal

Offer incentives, discounts or coupons to members that provide feedback Next, extract necessary data to plan your next event from your event software:

1) Attendee demographics, location and age
2) Statistics of the registration during the event
3) Relationship of attendees with your community
4) What benefits were redeem by both members and non-members

With these data, you can select what worked for you and what didn’t and act upon it. These data can also be utilized by your marketing team for their next campaign for the next event. Increase value of your events to gather more attendees by following these valuable tips.